Behind the Couch

Written and directed by Julie Ducournau, Raw tells of veterinary student Justine (Garance Marillier), who is subjected to a series of humiliating and cruel initiations by the older students. Among the degrading rituals, Justine, a lifelong vegetarian, is forced to eat raw meat by her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf). This act awakens within Justine an insatiable bloodlust and craving for human flesh… Raw is an unsettling, full-blooded odyssey of self-discovery and actualisation told from a fiercely feminist vantage. It stalks similar territory to titles such as Ginger Snaps and The Company of Wolves in its unwavering exploration of female sexuality (which historically has been shamed or out-rightly denied by patriarchal discourse). Indeed, there are several irresistible parallels with  Ginger Snaps , not least the complex, often toxic bond between the sisters, and the intense cravings Justine experiences as her body reacts to her new appetites. And, like the Fitzgerald sisters,...

2009 Dir. Tiwa Moeithaisong Troubled Buss (Mai Charoenpura) struggles to make ends meet and pay off her absent husband’s debts, selling noodle soup from her food cart. One day she is caught in the midst of a student riot and dragged to safety by activist Attapol, with whom she begins a tentative relationship. Buss later discovers the body of one of the rioters in her food cart and decides to cook it, adding the meat to her noodle soup. Before long, her business becomes very successful, meaning she must find a steady supply of fresh human meat to use in her cooking… Heavily marketed as the latest Thai ‘torture-porn’ export, Meat Grinder wears its promise of gut-wrenching gore and sadistic scenes of violence rather proudly. And so it should, for they are amongst the most startling and insistent scenes of carnage in recent memory. The opening monochromatic montage depicts a woman calmly preparing a human cadaver for cooking, smearing it with herbs and spices and marinating it befor...

1978 Dir. Joe D’Amato A team of geologists attempt to remove an indigenous, allegedly cannibalistic population from their island home in order to set up a power station and perform atomic research. The islanders' leader has other plans though, and she sets about disposing of the the pesky geologists one by one, utilising the art of seduction to aid her quest. Papaya (Melissa) is just your average voodoo priestess, eco-activist and blood crazed cannibal, willing to do whatever it takes to keep her tropical island home from being exploited by nuclear scientists hell-bent on building a nuclear reactor on it. And if that means stripping off her clothes every five minutes and seducing them one by one, then killing them by castrating them - so be it!  The film opens with Papaya emerging from the sea, strutting across the beach, entering a palm-hut, smearing fruit over a man before biting off his penis and watching as her henchmen (who look like they’d be equally at home on the ...

Writer and director Tim Sullivan splattered onto the scene in 2005 with 2001 Maniacs , his satirical remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s drive-in splatter classic, Two Thousand Maniacs!  (1964). His follow up,  Driftwood (2006), was about a traumatised teenager sent to a summer camp for troubled young people after he claims his dead brother is haunting him. The filmmaker will soon be seen venturing in front of cameras to portray murderous cross-dressing nun, Sister Mary Chopper, in the forthcoming Bloody Bloody Bible Camp .  Tim very kindly took some time out from pre-production on his dream project, the vampire horror Brothers of the Blood , to chat to me about his latest film - the gruesome sequel 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams , which has just been unleashed on DVD - as well as his fondness for 'splatstick' comedy-horror, and the importance of gay representation in horror films...   What ingredients did Two Thousand Maniacs! possess that made it so ripe for a...

Isle of the Damned  (2008) wears its Video Nasty influences on its badly dubbed, deliberately amateurish and bloodily soiled sleeve, lovingly parodying the European exploitation flicks that inspired it. I recently had the pleasure of catching up with its director, the elusive Antonello Giallo (aka Mark Colegrove) to have a chat about his tongue-in-flayed-cheek movie, Italian gore cinema, and the challenges of low-budget filmmaking… How did the idea for Isle of the Damned come about? Had you always conceived it as a parody? What inspired it? It was definitely a parody from the get-go, inspired by all the old Italian cannibal films. We knew that if we were to try to do a serious Italian cannibal film on our budget it would have ended up unintentionally hilarious. A serious film really wouldn’t be our style anyhow. The script was written by Mark Leake, and we had done one previous film together called Pleasures of the Damned , which is the prequel to Isle… Jack Steele is the main ...

2008 Dir. Morgan Hampton Mild-mannered businessman Scott (Wayne Casey) is abducted by thrill-seeking killers Razor and Julie (Paul Schilens and Lisa Wharton) and taken on a hell-ride into the bowels of a ‘family’ consisting of rapists, murderers and modern day cannibals. The three are then captured and sent to Red (Annie Scott Rogers), the head of the ‘family’, who promises them all freedom. As time passes and the abuse at the hands of their captors becomes more frequent, Razor and Julie are seemingly released, giving Scott hope that he will also be freed. When that day finally comes and he is positioned as the ‘honoured guest’ at a feast Red has prepared, Scott thinks his nightmare is finally over. He should think again though… After an intriguing opening that snares one’s attention, in which a man is abducted at gunpoint by two dangerous thrill-seekers who then run over and kill an innocent bystander, Razor’s Ring twists and turns into a very different film. By turning the tab...

The story behind director Michael J Murphy’s recent low budget, darkly comic and rather splattery Skare , is an interesting one. Basing the script on his own short story, Murphy set about filming in 2001. Disaster struck, however, when the unprocessed film got lost in the post on the way to be developed at Kodak. Murphy found himself in debt and without a film. Skip ahead a few years and as Murphy began working on a new project, he found himself drawn back to the original script of Skare . Gathering together a new cast and crew, the tenacious filmmaker set about filming Skare once again. The story focuses on the unlikely, and increasingly disturbing, partnership between Martha - the reclusive owner of a country club and Dan - a young escapee from a nearby psychiatric hospital. Dan soon discovers that Martha has sinister ulterior motives for her kindness and following the discovery of a decapitated head in a refrigerator, it soon becomes very clear the lengths she goes to in order...

1972 Dir. Gary Sherman AKA Raw Meat When students Alex and Patricia (David Ladd and Sharon Gurney) find a dying man on the London Underground, naturally they go for help. However, when they return the man has disappeared. Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasance) launches an investigation which leads them into London’s murky Underground rail system, where they make a grisly discovery – a group of cannibals that have been feasting on the flesh of London commuters! Death Line is one of the more interesting and unusual British horror films from the Seventies, with its tale of cannibalism in the London Underground and a scathing, scarily accurate commentary on the British Class system. The sleazy opening follows a smartly dressed, dapper 'gentleman' on a trawl through the seedy, neon-drenched streets of Soho, as he wanders through various peep shows, propositioning various women before venturing into the London Underground where he is attacked by an unseen assailant. The grimy,...

2008 Dir. Mark Colegrove Banned in 492 Countries! Private Investigator Jack Steele (Larry Gamber) is hired by a mysterious treasure hunter to help him locate the lost treasure of Marco Polo. Steele’s quest brings him to a strange island off the coast of Argentina rumoured to be populated by a lost tribe of cannibals. As Steele and his small group of treasure hunters explore the island, they realise that the rumours are true and they must utilise all their resources to stay alive and make it off the island in one piece… But who is the bizarre recluse, Alexis Kinkaid (Keith Tveit Langsdorf)? And why do everyone’s lips move out of sync with what they’re saying? Screened as part of Belfast’s first Yellow Fever Independent Film Festival – and winner of Best International Film - Isle of the Damned is a shameless throwback to 80s Italian exploitation movies such as Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox and Deep River Savages – with added satire. The work of Ruggero Deadato is specifi...

1974 Dir. Pete Walker British director Pete Walker is often unfairly overlooked in the history of British horror cinema. In a time when Hammer was, well, ‘hammering’ out elaborate gothic fantasies set in far off lands full of superstitious locals, middle class genteel types and otherworldly monsters, Walker was setting his more grimy tales firmly in contemporary England. His horrors spewed out within grotty bed-sits, bleak London streets and hideous seventies décor. Frightmare explores notions of family, generational conflict and authority, with graphic and, dare I say it, gritty enthusiasm. The film follows the exploits of Dorothy Yates (Sheila Keith). Released from incarceration after fifteen years, Dorothy is not as reformed or rehabilitated as her carers would like to believe. She is, in fact, utterly deranged. As soon as she is released she resumes alleviating her insatiable appetite for human flesh. Setting up a tarot-reading service in her home, she lures innocents vict...